2.02 – Night of Desirable Objects

A highway construction worker in rural Pennsylvania goes missing when he is mysteriously drawn into an underground tunnel filled with human remains. Meanwhile, back in the lab, Walter is attempting to simulate travel between realities on frogs. When it’s discovered that the disappearance in Pennsylvania is not an isolated incident, the Fringe team travels to the crime scene to unearth evidence in the “Night of Desirable Objects” episode of FRINGE airing Thursday, Sept. 24 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

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I am counting the days that we finally see what a special person peter Bishop is. he has been bashed for way too long! WRITERS step up! You said that peter will have bigger role but it hasn’t been shown at all!

Most armed home invasion confrontations take place even closer than Olivia and Peter were. Even at that range trained officers like Olivia only have a 1 out of 5 historical average of hitting their intended target. In this case Olivia went against her training and squeezed one off as a flinch. She should have IDed her target first. Peter in no way dodged the bullet. Olivia in no way aimed the gun in more than a general direction. See this book for more info.
Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control, by Kleck and Kates
ISBN:978-1573928830

Kinda put me to mind of “Tremors”, especially when the squad car fell in the hole as in this trailer.

Couldn’t help but notice a nod to “Alias” in the form of Sam Weiss. And it’s always good to see Charlie Martin Smith every 10 years or so (almost 40 years since his memorable role in “American Graffiti”).

Is this what the LA Times meant when they called “Fringe” a (going from memory here) ‘a non-stop thrill ride’? I sure hope not. This episode was way too much like the Puff the Magic Dragon story last season and much too self-contained. 40 out of the 43 minutes had nothing to do with anything. The only interesting bits were the scenes involving Olivia’s side effects from her trip to the other side. This was “Fringe” under heavy sedation.

Last week the shape shifter had orders to question Olivia and then kill her. This week’s typewriter was slightly less militant, suggesting that rather than Dunham being killed on the spot, she should be helped to remember. A kinder, gentler typewriter. If it was ‘unacceptable’ that she couldn’t remember, how much more ‘unacceptable’ would it have been if she’d been murdered in the hospital and still couldn’t remember?

It was interesting to note that Evil C. gleaned from a 12 second conversation with Olivia that she ‘trusts him completely’. Olivia is already picking up on his bad vibe. I don’t know if he’s ever called her ‘Olivia’ before (I don’t think so), but it certainly warranted a quick second take from Liv tonight.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Akiva Goldsman’s involvement generally results in the more interesting “Fringe” episodes (i.e. the one’s that deal with the coming war and alternate realities) and his absence tonight resulted in an unfortunate throwback to the freak-of-the-week template (although not even a Pattern Event this time) that plagued much of Season 1. The “Fringe” end game could be dragged out for decades at this rate.

Let’s move this puppy forward, shall we? I’m not as young as I used to be.

Can I just say that as a Dept of Defense employee, I got quite an unintentional laugh when Broyles was showing Peter the “Secret” information on a packed sidewalk. At least they included a cover sheet, but you would never be allowed to do that in public. I was half waiting for the Men in Black to jump out and stop him.

I agree with Page 48 whole-heartedly. To me this was the worst episode to date. The only new elements were the lure and Sam Weiss. That’s slim pickins for a whole episode. At least they could have spent a little more time on either helping to unravel a thread or two surrounding these new elements.

There are rumors floating around the web about the observer’s appearance or lack there of in this episode. A still shot that is allegedly him has been produced, but I’m thinking that you see what you want to see. I watched the episode twice in a row, once just to look for him and didn’t find him. With such a weak or non-existent appearance this episode loses even more street cred.

Its obvious agent Jessup wears the grays and blacks. It seems to me she even may be activated already. So the question then becomes what is an active soldier in the inter-dimensional war doing shadowing the fringe team while they’re “coming into their own”? Friend or foe?

What was with fake-Charlie’s bad case of constipation? Really you want to leave it just as that?

My take on the lure is that its an alterverse object. Its obviously not part of our world based on a google search. So the sheriff was from the alterverse too? That might add much more intrigue to this episode than is otherwise apparent. Peter inadvertently revealed himself to a fellow alterversian when he doesn’t even realize his origin himself?? Cool!

There were a couple of stand out quotes during the episode that seemed to blatantly lead to and foreshadow other things. Walter saying the paralytic was “pregnant with [possibilities or potential]”. Walter’s ominous “Boy who is dead who is not in his grave” comment and Olivia’s comment to f-Charlie to the effect of, “Can you imagine somebody going to such lengths, being so desperate to have a son?” The connections in those quotes are self-evident enough that I’ll leave you to draw them.

There should have been more time in this episode spent on Sam Weiss and Olivia. Just a step or two more down the direction that that one is headed would have left us salivating for more. As-is left no savor in my mouth to make me want more. Just resentment that there was no more to be had now.

Kill her! Befriend her! Find out what she knows! Kill her for not knowing anything! Kill her because she might know something! Get her to lead you to it! Act like you’re not married to someone else and say weird comments to her! Come on guys! Whoever is at the typewriter on the alter-side needs some bipolar medication! Send f-Charlie an ex-lax while you’re at it.

Over all I’m disappointed to have so little to talk about from this episode. Its causing us to have to aggrandize things that are probably insignificant.

Oh I forgot my most favorite quote of the episode! Walter to the Sheriff when they arrive in Penn. “Well we’re all victims of our gene pool. Someone must have peed in yours.” ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess I don’t really understand the dislike of this episode. It seemed a necessary step in the story telling.
We’re no more than a week from Olivia’s accident. The writers could have left Olivia’s accident on the back-burner or (as they decided to do) address it.

Since our Fringe-team are scientists, it makes sense that they’d want an explanation for Olivia’s hour long disappearance and violent reappearance. As I see it, there are three ways the team could make an attempt at an explanation: 1) attempt to recreate the scenario in the lab; 2) look for other similar occurrences to determine a common cause; 3) sit and wait for an answer to reveal it self.
Walter is doing #1 and Peter #2, and I am glad they’re not opting for #3.

I’m glad the writers didn’t take the easy way out and have Walter recreate the event or have Peter track down other dimension-crossings on the first try. Science (like detective work) involves trial and error and patience, rarely do things work in the first week of attempts. So, I see this as a necessary diversion – to fail to show the team’s failed attempts does their successes a disservice. And wouldn’t we all be pissed off if they just sat around the lab and tried to recreate the accident – isn’t that just bad detective work?

HMMM — I completely agree with everything you said! It’s good to know there’s someone else out there who isn’t frustrated with the pace of the show and who thought this was a good episode. The reasons you gave were right on and you explained it all very well. So thank you!

I’ve been very surprised to read so many negative reactions to this episode. I quite enjoyed it and felt that it was far from the worst episode. I thought it was a very interesting case that kept me wondering what was going to happen. And while the episode didn’t necessarily further the progress of some of the main questions or plot lines, it did address them and give important information. I felt that there were many significant things in this episode and I thought that the way they chose to proceed made everything much more realistic.

I’m willing to wait and trust that the writers and producers will get around to those larger stories in the near future. The fact that we’ve already been introduced to the alternate reality concept when the original plan had been to leave that for season 3 or 4 tells me that things are moving along rather quickly. So I don’t think there’s any reason to complain about the pace of things right now.

I loved this episode! And even if I weren’t a die-hard Fringie, I would have been drawn in by it. It was like a mini-Hitchcock movie, with the slow calm not scary things suddenly becoming scary, and the drama from the tension of the protagonists, more even than from the villain. But it was also scary and thrilling, an edge of the seat ride.

Seems like the ones complaining the loudest didn’t watch the same show I did; there was mythology (the mirror, the typewriter/old tech, ample refs to dead sons and graves, etc.) (remember folks not all mythology involves Olivia!), there was character development, (Peter is taking charge and showing added …powers?…) there was movement on what happened to Olivia–looks like that augmented hearing might be a side effect of crossing to another universe……..Crikey! What more do you want? There were even tender P/O moments for a benchy such as myself.

If you want to watch Lost, or FastForward, do so; but those of us who are watching Fringe for Fringe, are fine with it. In fact, look at this afternoon’s ratings, it did much better than folks said this morning. It’s doing what Bad Robot wanted, and I can’t wait for more!

Regarding those impressive ratings, the gist of 2.02’s ratings in the handful of news items that I came across can be summed up like this: The show that really took a beating at 9 was Fox’s “Fringe,” which may be proving it needs a big lead-in (like “American Idol” last season) to do well. “Fringe” tumbled to an audience of just 5.85 million (down 2 million viewers) and only a 2.3 rating in the 18-49 audience — a worrisome sign for a show that was supposed to have momentum after last season.

I don’t credit TV viewers with having much taste in general (otherwise, we’d be enjoying Season 9 of “Alias” and “Grey’s Anatomy” would be cleaning out the stables), so ratings, while important from a business standpoint, are pretty close to irrelevant as a method of allowing quality shows to take their rightful place at the top.

Ratings, aside, though, I saw was nothing in “Fringe” 2.02 that required edge of seat deployment. It was very much an “X-Files” episode, so much so that an appearance by “The Lone Gunmen” would not have gone amiss. I miss those guys, they should never have been canceled, let alone killed.

I don’t credit TV viewers with having much taste in general (otherwise, we’d be enjoying Season 9 of “Alias” and “Grey’s Anatomy” would be cleaning out the stables), so ratings, while important from a business standpoint, are pretty close to irrelevant as a method of allowing quality shows to take their rightful place at the top.

Good point.

Makes me wonder how much more potential for growth Fringe has?

Perhaps the powers that be should spend more time catering for their loyal viewers. That in itself might actually attract more new viewers. I still think there’s a bit of a misconception that serialized shows make for inaccessible storytelling.